2003: Year in Review

Writer-director David Gordon Green's second feaure film is another poetic, lovely, thoughtful take on small-town North Carolina life to rival his terrific debut, "George Washington" (2000). Paul Schneider (who co-conceived the story with Green) plays Paul, a lothario who sleeps with all the girls in town and then dumps them quickly and not particularly tactfully ("I think I hate you too"). He hangs out with friends Tip and Bust-Ass (Danny McBride), and occasionally helps his mom (Patricia Clarkson) as a clown for hire at the local children's hospital. When his best friend's sister (the lovely Zooey Deschanel) comes back to town from boarding school, Paul is faced with his first real prospect for love. But will she just be another conquest, or will they succeed where previous relationships have failed? Green has a great eye for visual splendor, and an equal ear for dialogue which sounds plausible in a sort of heightened reality; these people talk not like you or me, but how we might wish we could talk. Deschanel is luminescent and fragile as a sweet young girl for whom Paul his her first lover, and for whom the ultimate dream is to find someone nice, trust-worthy and decent. Paul tries to fit the bill, but nobody's perfect. The film is a bittersweet tone poem for North Carolina, for young love, and for the heartbreak that often ensues. An absolute gem.

Stephen Fry's masterful adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's brilliant 1930 novel is a surprisingly (if appropriately) thoughtful take on the lives of gossipy, frollicking twentysomethings in London on the precipice of World War II. Stephen Campbell Moore is Adam Symes, an aspiring writer whose latest manuscript is confiscated by Customs ("gotta keep filth outta the country") upon his return to England. There, he and his circle of friends and associates: Miles, a homosexual; Agatha, a bird-brained "hottentott"; and Nina, his fiancee, spend all night every night indulging in excess at every single available party. Scandalous behavior rocks the local papers, owned by Adam's expectant publisher Lord Monomark (Dan Aykroyd); now that Adam's out a book, he owes for the advance. Their world is judged on-high by an Evangelical missionary named Melrose Ape (Stockard Channing), whose choir's rendition of "Ain't No Flies on the Lamb of God" has to be heard to be believed, and when they aren't dodging charges of moral indeceny, they're attempting to avoid the rabid nature of the paparazzi, represented by the semi-tragic Lord Simon Balcairn (James McAvoy). The heart of the story, if that's the word, is in the on-again/off-again romance and engagement of Adam and Nina, whose fortunes literally govern their ability to get married; it's hilarious seeing Adam attempt a cohesive conversation with Nina's senile colonel father (Peter O'Toole), as well as the shenanigans of a mysterious drunk Major (Jim Broadbent), with whom he has a shady financial dealing. As the clouds of war loom overhead, these "bright young things" (who share their moniker with the title of Adam's confiscated book) are completely oblivious, living in their bubblegum world of parties, alcohol and cocaine, spinning ever faster out of control. As a first-time writer-director, comedian and actor Stephen Fry wisely takes the "it's all fun and games till somebody gets hurt" approach to Waugh's prose; the film, as a result, is deeper and wiser than we at first expect, and the ending comes as something of a stunner, even if it's inevitable. In their boozy, would-be aristocratic ways, I was reminded of Whit Stillman's "yuppie trilogy" ("Metropolitan," "Barcelona" and "The Last Days of Disco"). The cast is uniformly excellent, with Stephen Campbell Moore the perfect nebbish, Emily Mortimer as the belle of the ball who seeks love in all the wrong places, Michael Sheen as a shamelessly flaming queen whose mother is pummeled by the implications in the press, and Fenella Woolgar as the tragic Agatha, so funny, so blissfully clueless, and so heartbreakingly oblivious to the writings of doom on the wall. With cinematographer Henry Braham, Fry has found an astonishingly assured style for his first effort: stately and gorgeous in the dramatic scenes, hyperkinetic and wild in the early party days. The results are amusing, bittersweet and ultimately moving. One of 2004's very best films!

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." - George Santayana

Errol Morris' masterful documentary is a riveting, powerful, thought-provoking meditation on the kinds of considerations that must be made in order to go to war, the mistakes that often ensue, and how to learn from those mistakes. Robert S. McNamara was the first non-family member to run the Ford Motor Company before being asked by President John F. Kennedy to be the Secretary of Defense. He worked for the Kennedy Administration through the Cuban Missle Crisis, the Bay of Pigs Fiasco, and into the Vietnam War, through Kennedy's assassination, and then was asked to stay on under Lyndon B. Johnson. He eventually left to be president of the World Bank. He was seen during his tenure in Washington as the architect of the Vietnam War, and is regretful, mournful, breaks down a few times remembering his part in the planning of the firebombing of Japan (Morris chillingly juxtaposes lists upon lists of casualties with imagery of numbers falling like bombs over stock footage of Tokyo and other cities). At 85, McNamara is a thoughtful, introspective elder who has garnered a lifetime of regrets, and of lessons learned. His excessive and almost unrelenting candor is perfect fodder for Morris' film, which employs a mechanism of his own invention: the "Interrotron" is a device which allows the camera to shoot the subject head-on while showing him his interviewer's face and vice-versa; the effect is to render the subject immovable and unable to evade questioning. McNamara has no desire to evade Morris' probing, except when it comes to an epilogue where further questions about Vietnam and his retrospective feelings on the subject leave McNamara cold and less than responsive; he doesn't want to say anything to get himself in more trouble now. Errol Morris is certainly the most polished and possibly the best documentarian alive today. He started in 1978 with "Gates of Heaven," about pet cemetaries in California, and has since made such films as "Vernon, Florida" (1982) about the personalities of the residents of a small retirement community; "The Thin Blue Line" (1988), which caused the dropping of charges and the release of a prisoner sentenced to life in a closed murder case; "A Brief History of Time" (1992), based on Stephen Hawking's scientific theories; "Fast, Cheap & Out of Control" (1997), about odd inventors on the fringe of society; and "Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr." (1999), about the man who brought various forms of the death penalty into the modern age before being ostracized for his Holocaust denial. If that is (arguably) Morris' best film, then this is certainly his most relevant and important work to date. Morris' film takes on the structure of "Eleven Lessons from the Life of" McNamara, sometimes heard openly posing questions to his subject, often quietly listening, sometimes driving his subject, sometimes allowing McNamara to dictate the structure ("I wanna go back to that..."). Morris' film is constructed like a thriller, aided and abetted by Philip Glass' eerie, haunting and urgent musical score, where his past as a private investigator comes in handy as he and McNamara turn a sharp, observant eye to a point of no return in American history. The effect is astonishing, moving and chilling. I only wish someone in the government would take a gander at this and do like McNamara does. NOTE: Morris followed his 2003 Oscar win for Best Documentary for this film with another probe into relatively recent American history with "Standard Operating Procedure" (2008), about the pictures from Abu Ghraib, their meaning and what they may actually be about.

Erik Van Looy's film is a tense, brilliant, suspenseful and hypnotically absorbing thriller like only Europeans can make them. Jan Decleir gives a riveting performance as Angelo Ledda, a hitman from Marseilles heired to travel to Antwerp, Belgium and snuff out the last remaining connections to a child prostitution ring. Showing symptoms of an onset of Alzheimer's, Ledda has a sudden strike of conscience and can't go through with his job. His cohorts aren't too happy about this either. Investigating the string of dead bodies that Angelo leaves in his wake is a detective named Vincke, who is just one step behind Angelo the entire time. This is a somewhat hyperkinetic, but thoughtful character study of cops and criminals, like something the great Jean-Pierre Melville could've made back in the day; near-perfect!

Patty Jenkins' film is a deeply disturbing, hypnotically fascinating, and utterly absorbing experience. Aileen Wuornos was one of the first female serial killers in America. Abused and into drugs as a child, Aileen was a starry-eyed dreamer who thought she could've been an actress like Marilyn Monroe, but was not going to be "discovered" as a thirteen-year old prostitute. In Florida, Aileen began hitchhiking on the highways, servicing truck drivers and loners in cars. Aileen had one friend - a Vietnam vet and fellow drunk named Thomas (Bruce Dern), who pities her when she can't pay her storage garage's rent and never asks for her "services" in return. Then, between 1989 and 1990, Aileen met a sweet, young Christian-raised lesbian named Selby Wall (Christina Ricci), who was in the area from Ohio after her father sent her to live with family and "figure some things out." Aileen fell in love with Selby, not at first sight per say, but gradually over a few days. Soon, Aileen was trying to keep Selby from leaving her, and needed to gain money. Attempts at quitting prostitution failed, and one night she was raped. She murdered the man in what looks an awful lot like self-defense. The six murders which occurred after that were an unfortunate side effect of her terrible childhood and treatment at the hands of the men in her life (with the exception of Thomas), and stemmed largely from a need for money to keep Selby accustomed to her chosen lifestyle. Writer-director Patty Jenkins has crafted an unflinching portrait of a serial killer, absorbing in its detail and profoundly moving in its humanity. Charlize Theron stars as Aileen Wuornos, but it isn't a performance so much as a transformation; she's channeling demons here, not simply "acting." With her wild eyes, her low Southern drawl, and her profound weight gain - alongside the remarkable makeup effects of Toni G. - Theron becomes Aileen. Christina Ricci is essentially the sweet young innocent who falls into Aileen's web. Theron, however, is the star of the show. We see that she is deeply in love with Selby, that she is good-humored and we even meet her at her lowest point - she was about to kill herself before walking into a bar and first meeting her lady love. She is not without a scintilla of compassion; she lets a seemingly mentally challenged man (Pruitt Taylor Vince, all dodgy eyes and stutters) go after her streak of killing's begun. Then things go from bad to worse, when fate catches up with her. One night, on a dark highway, she is picked up by a Good Samaritan (Scott Wilson) who simply wants to help her out. When she realizes she can't kill him, she is getting out of the car and he sees something he wasn't supposed to see. His fate is sealed. "God forgive me," she says. This is a portrait of a shattered person, someone who never stood a chance. Circumstances drove her to prostitution, and circumstances again drove her to kill - first in self-defense, then for money. It's all in the details. What Jenkins and Theron have provided then is a profound exercise in empathy; we can just about feel Wuornos' pain. It's one of the year's best films.

NOTE: Theron of course won the Oscar for Best Actress.

Isabel Coixet's slice of life is a bittersweet romance, a dour drama, a tearjerking soap opera and a pretty shamelessly manipulative melodrama. Ann (Sarah Polley) is a 23-year-old night janitor at a university in a small town (possibly in Canada). She is married to high school sweetheart Don (Scott Speedman from TV's "Felicity"), a swimming pool designer, and has two kids. Her mother (Deborah Harry; yes) is a bitter working stiff, still angry at her former husband (Alfred Molina), who is in prison. Her co-worker and best friend is Laurie (Amanda Plummer). One day, Ann collapses and goes to the hospital. Dr. Thompson (Julian Richings of TV's "Kingdom Hospital") informs her, completely without looking her in the eye, that she is dying of cancer. Ann makes first one difficult decision (she will create a list of 10 things to do before she dies) and then another (she will keep her death from her family and all others so as to save them the pain of the truth). The film then will consist of Ann going about her everyday life, including creating tape messages for her daughters' birthdays all the way through their 18th birthdays, carrying on a sexual affair with a lovesick loner called Lee (Mark Ruffalo), and screening her neighbor, also named Ann (Leonor Watling), as a potential replacement for her family to embrace. The film is based on a book by Nanci Kincaid and was written and directed by Isabel Coixet, a Spanish filmmaker who made the dark indie comedy "Things I Never Told You" (1996), which featured Lili Taylor as a suicidal young woman who falls for her suicide hotline operator (Andrew McCarthy). Though the film has a certain slice of life quality, observing the everyday details of Ann's life and the lives of those around her, it also has the contours of a soap opera, without the payoff. There is always the threat of revelation, but it almost never rears its head. The results are shamelessly manipulative, without ever going over the top. The film is grounded by Sarah Polley's performance as a woman with convictions, faced with a dire future, who makes her family's decisions for them without their consent and lives with herself (for a time) in doing so. The film then is a somewhat flawed affair, but not bad for what it is.

A dwarf moves into a train depot. There, he befriends a neurotic painter and a talkative hot dog vendor. No, it's not the setup for a joke. It's the setup for this lovely, gentle, funny little independent film. Peter Dinklage is Fin, a mild-mannered "little person" working in a model train store in Hoboken, New Jersey when his the owner, his best friend (Paul Benjamin from Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing") dies suddenly on the job. His friend leaves him a train depot on a plot of land in the small, rustic town of Newfoundland and Fin moves there. Soon, he's being inundated with unsoliticed conversation from Joe (Bobby Cannavale), the uber-friendly Cuban hot dog/coffee vendor whose father's business (Gorgeous Frank's) has a mobile stand right across from Fin's new home. Fin is taking a walk one day when he's run off the road (accidently) - not once, but twice! - by a distracted, bereaved, frustrated and troubled painter named Olivia (the luminescent Patricia Clarkson). Soon, the trio is a surrogate family, helping each other to cope in the wilds of the Garden State. Fin also gains the attentions of a sweet young librarian (Michelle Williams) and a curious little black girl (Raven Goodwin). The film has been thoughtfully written and directed by actor-turned-filmmaker Tom McCarthy. Here, he has crafted a small film (89 minutes) which is more concerned with quirky human behavior and relationships than with plot. In Dinklage, he has found the ideal (if unlikely) centerpiece for this small fish out of water story, and surrounded him with two wonderful and specific people (Cannavale and Clarkson). This is tiny, warm human comedy at its finest. NOTE: McCarthy has since gone on to act with George Clooney in his "Good Night, and Good Luck." and Stephen Gaghan's "Syriana" (both 2005), and also wrote and directed "The Visitor" (2008).